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Faka Kun
Motivation: liberate the Djala people and help them build a free nation of their own Caste: Night Anima Banner: A spider of violet shadows rises up on its rear legs, its eight eyes gleaming with motes of Essence. ----- Faka Kun grew up a slave to a snakeman named Nisius Chen, but instead of being bought for sex or hard labor, he trained her to be the star acrobat in the five-ring Gerontine Circus (of which he was the ringleader) and a cat burglar - using her to wring more money out of the towns Gerontine visited. Nisius even let her set aside her cut of the criminal proceeds toward buying her eventual freedom. Faka Kun eagerly took every job Nisius suggested, hoping to one day make her way to White Refuge—the free Djala enclave out in the Southern desert. She was not the first Djala acrobat Nisius had worked into an early grave chasing that dream, but unrealistic hope was better than no hope at all. It was in pursuit of White Refuge that Faka Kun came to recognize her Celestial destiny. The circus was performing in the Lap, and she was trying to lift a set of jade razor claws from the imperial satrap’s mansion. She got in all right, even managed to find the razor claws, but she tripped an alarm on the way out. At that moment, she could have surrendered or relinquished her prize, but she didn’t do either. Her freedom was riding on getting out with the goods—she had to try. She made her decision, a rush of conviction accompanied it. The Laplander guards quickly cornered her, but they were no match for the Unconquered Sun’s newest Night Caste. Faka Kun returned home reinvigorated, but didn’t go straight to Nisius. Instead, she went to her fellow slaves and told them what had happened. It broke her heart to see the spirit drain from their faces as they listened to her. That was it, they said. She would disappear from their lives to go do… whatever the Exalted did… but they would be slaves until they died. So Faka Kun made the second fateful decision of that evening. Rather than take her prize to Nisius and buy her freedom with it, she kept it and stole the Djala out of the Gerontine instead. When word of the theft at the satrap’s mansion reached Nisius, he had not a slave left to his name. When word of that theft got to him shortly thereafter, Faka Kun had returned once more for the circus’s cash box. When the frantic snakeman discovered THAT theft, Faka Kun had already sold the razor claws to Nisius’s own underworld contact and exchanged the day’s take in ticket sales from paper script to hard silver dinars. The next morning, she spent all that money buying supplies, transportation and a guide to see them all safely to White Refuge. To her surprise as much as theirs, she gave the leftover money to the keepers of the Djala enclave as soon as she got there and turned around to leave once more. There were still more Djala out there with nobody looking out for them, she explained, not to mention many rich fools with nobody looking out for their money. If she didn’t do anything about that, nobody would. So she walked away. Yet, it was not the last she and White Refuge saw of each other. In the years since her Exaltation, she has returned many times, always with more Djala looking for a new life where they can be their own masters.